Impact of Medicare Office Visit Payment Reform on Urologic Practices.

ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVE:To evaluate the 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, which modifies reimbursement for office evaluation and management (E&M) visits. This policy moves payment to a single rate for levels 2 through 4 office E&M visits, regardless of complexity. METHODS:Using a 20% sample of 2015 National Medicare claims, we identified urologic practices and their practice organization, academic affiliation, and degree of office focus (ie, proportion of revenues from office visits). Using billing data for each practice, we calculated the revenues expected under the current system and the new policy (both E&M payments and a new add-on code). For each practice, we determined the impact of new payment rates on total Medicare payments. RESULTS:We identified 2822 practices: 1372 (48.6%) solo practices,

SUBMITTER: Modi PK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6443448 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature